When I first joined Twitter, I remember the excitement and intrigue over this new platform, using great third-party apps and having intelligent conversations with people. Sadly, those days look like they have already, or are soon going to be, gone and lots of people are looking for a new place for their social interactions. 



Enter Mastodon, an open-source social platform powered by ActivityPub and part of the wider Fediverse. My guest this week is James Smith, an open-source developer who also happens to run the Mastodon instance I joined in the last week or so.



We chat about what precisely the Fediverse is, looking back at the early days of the internet for some context, as well as going fairly deep into the what, why, and how of Mastodon. James also shares the story of what happened to his server during the rapid ‘abandon ship’ style departure from the bird site and how one high-profile member meant a quadrupling of server costs! 



One thing to be very upfront about, Jae and I have pretty much decided we won’t be active on Twitter. However, because we don’t want to cut off our amazing listeners who are still on the bird powered platform, our Twitter account is staying put, as well as our new home on Mastodon, which because of the nature of the platform means we have more scope in terms of content.



Have you jumped into the Fediverse yet, or is something holding you back? If you have comments, or have some questions about Mastodon and need some help, we’d love hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.



If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.



Episode Links




James Bilsbrough on Mastodon



James Smith on Mastodon



Crossed Wires on Mastodon



Join Mastodon



Fediverse



Pixelfed



Funkwhale



PeerTube



Fedifinder – Find your Twitter contacts on Mastodon



Debirdify – Another way to find Twitter contacts.




Chapter Times




00:00:04: Introductions



00:04:01: The Fediverse & ActivityPub



00:11:50: What Is Mastodon?



00:14:25: Mastodon Features



00:19:46: No Ads



00:21:51: Content Promotion, Rules, Timelines



00:26:59: Filtering The Fediverse



00:33:02: Equal Apportunities



00:37:03: The Deluge Of New Users



00:45:46: Server Architecture



00:47:34: Self-Hosting & Federation



00:51:33: More Than Just Mastodon



01:01:23: Wrapping Up




Credits



Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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